Interview: LUKA talks songwriting and making movies as a kid

The cover of artist LUKA's new album, Summon Up a Monkey King. Pictures LUKA sitting on a chair in front of a mostly blank wall.

By Renee LeBlanc

Luke Kuplowsky, or LUKA, is a sad but beautifully amorous voice who resides in Toronto, Ont. He’s soft spoken and passionate. His fourth release, Summon Up a Monkey King, was released in June 2016 on Yellow K Records. CKCU’s Renee Leblanc caught up with LUKA to talk about the new album, his inspirations, and making movies as a kid. This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.


CKCU:
How would you say your taste in music has influenced the music that you’ve created?

LUKA: I guess with Monkey King, I was listening to lots of Jonathan Richman, and Nina Simone, and Arthur Russell. Specifically they’re all singers who have a lot of freedom and an unstructured feel to their vocal performances. So there’s this kind of sincerity in their vocals that seems to be unconstrained by strict forms. I wanted to, in this album, speak to the songs very honestly, and I think they were touchstones for people who sing in a very untraditional way.

CKCU: So would you say that your vocals are the main focus on Monkey King?

LUKA: Yeah, I’d say there’s an element—and the instruments definitely help create a certain space where those vocals can lie—but I definitely try to approach the songs through the vocal performance and find a very natural, and sometimes nontraditional, way to do that.

CKCU: Personally, what would you say is your most memorable performance?

LUKA: I did a few dates about a year and a half ago opening for Timber Timber, and the second of those dates was the first time I ever played a large, sit-down audience, and that was in London at the Aeolian Hall. That experience was very memorable and surreal because it was the first time where there was a whole room of strangers that were intently focused. That was kind of the most rewarding performance I’ve had.

CKCU: Can you tell me what your songwriting process is like?

LUKA: It’s kind of changing from album to album, but for Monkey King the songs came out pretty organically—usually within the span of five minutes or so. I try not to structure songwriting into my day-to-day process, so just whenever an idea or feeling came up and then I’d sit down and the song would just kind of come out. I tend to look over and stay with the words a little bit longer, but for these songs, it just felt right to leave them as they were. There was very little to be done to them when they were finished.

CKCU: Out of the songs that you’ve written, which is the most meaningful to you, and why?

LUKA: At this moment, I’d say the song off Monkey King called “Love is The Eternal Weight.” I think it captures how I understand love as opposed to my earlier record. Many of the songs on  are a recognition that love is not something to catch or achieve, but a grounding force that you have to nurture and constantly work at. It was sort of an ‘aha’ moment in how I thought about love, and I’m always kind of tickled by the pun of the title, which is both this weight that you have to carry but something that you’re always waiting for.

CKCU: How did you get into writing and creating music?

LUKA: Growing up. I have two brothers and we’re very close and creatively driven. Since I was four or five, we would be making films or playing instruments, writing music. It was just very natural to create art in my family and songwriting slowly became a focus because I was getting more from that process than anything else.

CKCU: Who would you say is your favourite artist?

LUKA: That’s a tough one. I’m going to say Nina Simone. I think what’s so amazing about her is that, beyond the songs that she writes, she’s the only person that I can really think of that, whenever she covers a song, is able to completely divorce it from the person who wrote it in a way that’s kind of amazing. It seems that, when she covers a song, it doesn’t belong to anyone but her in that moment.

CKCU: What’s your favourite childhood memory?

LUKA: The act of making short films with my brothers. Specifically, when I was five, the early ones stick out like making Lego guns, and pretending to drive a car by sitting on someone’s lap, and we filmed in the military museum that we pretended was a spy base.

CKCU: Do you still have these films?

LUKA: Oh yeah, we have a whole archive of them. Some of the early ones are on high-eight tapes or VHS tapes, so those ones are hard to track down but we have them somewhere. I want to use some of those at some point in making a music video, or just share them in a small way.

CKCU: If you could pick any place to perform, where would it be and why?

LUKA: This one is a strange one, but I would love to perform in an Aki Kaurismäki film. He’s a Finnish director and his films always include a sequence of uninterrupted music. He’s one of my favourite directors and his films always stop the flow of storytelling and focus on this moment of performance, and the bands in his movies are always the coolest Finnish bands ever. I just want to be a part of that universe.

CKCU: Hypothetically, if you couldn’t pursue music, what would you do instead?

LUKA: Well, I have a Master’s in Cinema and I work as a student teacher, so one career would be pursuing that further. I don’t know. Music’s not really a sustainable career, so one important question that I should be thinking of instead is: If I can pursue music, what else am I going to do to support that?

CKCU: If you could wish for one thing knowing it would come true, what would it be?

LUKA: I’ve been wracking my brain on this one. I guess maybe to be in that film. That kind of question always strikes me as you could answer very earnestly and politically, but you could always say one hundred wishes and seem kind of smart-ass. You could also just say that you want to be in an Aki Kaurismäki film or a Jackie Chan film from the 1980s.

CKCU: Where do you see your music going next?

LUKA: Well, I’ve already finished a new record that’s based off a live, loose feel, and is a bit more aggressive in some ways, but it’s a softer record. I’m writing some new stuff right now, and I’m listening to a lot of Joni Mitchell, especially her new stuff which I really want to explore.

Check out LUKA’s latest album at http://lukalives.bandcamp.com/album/summon-up-a-monkey-king